Posts tagged ‘Steven Moffat’

I meant to type this up a long time ago, so here is another belated post that I can finally scratch off my to-do list. Let’s finish complaining about Peter Capaldi’s first series as the 12th Doctor.

Kill The Moon – I really wanted to like this episode, to the extent that I tried very very hard to ignore the problems with basic physics. Didn’t work. This could’ve been an amazingly scary episode, and yes when the li’l beastie jumped on the Doctor I certainly did jump, but the stoopid problems with basic science kept me from enjoying it as much as I wanted to.

Mummy On The Orient Express – This surprised me. A lot. In very good ways. When I saw the title, I expected I would despise it. When I saw the synopsis, I expected I would despise it. When I saw the “next time” trailer, I downright winced. But no, this was fantastic!

Flatline – Ditto. This was a fantastic one-two punch from a writer who has never written for Doctor Who before. Yowza! Almost tied with Mummy for the best episode of this series.

In The Forest Of The Night – Yawn. Major misfire. Not quite as wincingly bad as Deep Breath, but a major disappointment

Dark Water/Death In Heaven – Oh dear. An extremely promising opening. I don’t think I’ve been that stunned at a sudden death in Doctor Who since Earthshock. Alas, this was no Earthshock. There is no need to bring back the Master as a woman. No need whatsoever. If you need a villainous female Time Lord, bring back the Rani. Or better yet, let’s please see Romana turn evil. Oswald’s death was utterly unnecessary, to the point of leaving an extremely bad taste in my mouth. The mere fact that Moffat is bringing that character back for series 9 tells me he realizes how big of a mistake he made there. And the so-called “tribute” to the Brigadier was gut-wrenchingly disgusting. No. Just no. Plus … based on what was depicted here, can we assume that every single companion that has died on Earth has been Cyber-ressurected? Amy? Rory? Jamie?!? Funny thing is, with the recent announcement that this will be shown in cinemas in 3D, I asked my kids if they want to go and … nope. No interest whatsoever. This was so bad that they do not want to see it again, at all, not even for the gimmick of big-screen 3D.

Last Christmas – Not bad. Well … not entirely bad. Still a few missed opportunities. Again, another groan out loud when I found out Santa was going to be involved, but Nick Frost sold it to me. The dream crabs were get-under-your-skin creepy, and I loved the constant playing around with concepts of reality. And Faye Marsay absolutely rocked! But my biggest problem (which also relates to the end of Death In Heaven) is how many times are they going to tease Clara leaving? Originally Jenna Coleman was set to leave the show, and then she wasn’t, and then she was again, and now she’s not again! Screw that. I’m tired of Clara. I would much much rather see her leave for good and have this Doctor take Shona on a trip to go back and pick up Journey Blue.

So overall, some pretty mixed feelings here. The highs of the series were pretty high, but the lows were pretty low.

My final tally, in order of how much I enjoyed the stories:

1) Mummy On The Orient Express
2) Flatline
3) Time Heist
4) The Caretaker
5) Robot Of Sherwood
6) Into The Dalek
7) Last Christmas
8) Listen
9) Kill The Moon
10) Dark Water/Death In Heaven
11) In The Forest Of The Night
12) Deep Breath

Now that we are halfway through Peter Capaldi’s first series as the 12th Doctor, let’s take a quick look at the six episodes that have aired.

Deep Breath – Deep sigh. Deep wince. Deep groan. This was an overly bloated and amazingly boring series opener. Easily the worst new Doctor episode since Time And The Rani. Actually let me think about that for a moment … the TV movie, Rose, The Christmas Invasion, The Eleventh Hour … yep, I’d much rather watch any of those than have to watch this again. It felt like this was 42 minutes of piss-poor story stretched like Cassandra into a 75 minute time slot. And these Paternoster idiots have long outlived their entertainment value. Much like The Walking Dead – when I start rooting for the robots to kill the protagonists, there’s a very fundamental problem in the production of the programme. And this whole “Promised Land” bullshit is already tiring, just one episode into its so-called arc.

Into The Dalek – When I read the synopsis for this episode, I literally groaned. Out loud. It sounded horrible. “Fantastic idea for a movie, terrible idea for a proctologist.” Imagine how surprised I was by how much I enjoyed it. Except for the moment when the one chickadee sacrifices herself and pops into the wince-inducing Promised Land. That one small piece of garbage totally screwed over the pacing of that part of the episode, very much like any of BBC America’s commercial breaks do. Capaldi’s dialog in this episode, especially in the precredits sequence, sold me on his interpretation of the Doctor. But why couldn’t he have taken Journey Blue with him? I think she would’ve been a great companion.

Robot Of Sherwood – Another one whose synopsis made me groan at first. I’m tired of the ship-fell-backwards-through-time-and-is-stuck-in-the-past-trying-desperately-to-repair-itself plot (didn’t we just do that two weeks ago?). The actors playing Robin and the Sheriff were spot on, and this ended up entertaining me far more than I wanted it to. My only complaint is with the BBC’s stoopid decision to edit the climactic confrontation between Robin and the Sheriff. There was absolutely no need to trim that bit, and to tell you the truth, I thought cutting it seriously harmed the episode. (Yes, I’ve seen the original complete sequence and that moment plus the corresponding dialog added a few additional levels to the story that are now missing from the broadcast version.) Hopefully BBC Worldwide will have the sense to restore that full sequence when they release it on disc.

Listen – This is an odd one, because I downright hated it when I first saw it, to the extent that I was actively trying to figure out various ways of suppressing my forthcoming groaning as I sat down to watch it with my family. But it turned out – watching it with an audience – I ended up liking it after all. I think that it helped for all of us to watch it immediately after Robot Of Sherwood, because it’s a nice contrast to the Robin Hood episode. Capaldi’s pre-credits monologue is wonderful, and the controversial barn sequence wasn’t anywhere nearly as cringeworthy as I first thought it was. This episode does play to me more like several linked stories rather than one complete story. In other words, it comes across to me as rather disjointed. Perhaps one more pass back through the script polisher would’ve cleaned it up a bit?

Time Heist – What a fun episode. Fun, fun, fun. This is the first episode of the new series that I had absolutely no problems with. None whatsoever. And it still seemed to hold up well on a second viewing.

The Caretaker – I enjoyed this one far far more than I expected to … except for the last few minutes. I honestly do not give a damn about this Promised Land/Afterlife/Nethersphere arc. At least they learned their lesson from Into The Dalek and moved this bit to the end of the episode instead of immediately after that character’s death. That was one of the few problems I had with Into The Dalek and I think it’s the only problem I have with The Caretaker. The Doctor’s confrontational interactions with Danny Pink were particularly well done, and whistling Pink Floyd was a very nice touch.

Do I like Capaldi’s Doctor? Yes. I like the fact that he’s playing the character as more reserved/removed/callous than the previous new Who stars. I like his snarkiness. I like his Scottishness. I’m glad that in The Caretaker we finally get to see him balls out angry; that’s the aspect of the 12th Doctor that I’ve been waiting to see. “You … are a Time Lord?” “YES! And at the moment a RATHER ANGRY ONE!”

Do I like where this series is going? I’m not sure. I’ve been pretty impressed with four of the six episodes, but I don’t think I can fully answer this question until I see how the stoopid arc plays out. So I’m liking most of the footsteps but I don’t know if I like the path they’re walking down. Which brings me to the next question:

Why do we even NEED a series-long arc in modern Doctor Who? I don’t believe we do. The original series only did it twice; once as a lark since they had never done it before and once as commentary on how the BBC was treating the show.

At least Russell T. Davies knew how to do series-long arcs. Look at “Bad Wolf” in the first series and “Torchwood” in the second – they worked because they were subtle enough to not interfere in the storytelling process for individual episodes. “Mr Saxon” didn’t quite work out as well (I blame how they wrote John Simm’s characterization of the Master for that – he was panto when he should have been petrifying), but the disappearing planets did. Three out of four ain’t bad.

What sort of arc did Moffat present us with when he took over? Cracks and “Silence will fall,” neither of which are satisfactorily resolved by the end of the fifth series. So the sixth series uses Mrs. Eyepatch to try to clean things up a bit, but they’re still left somewhat hanging until the mad expositionary scramble to tie up loose ends in Matt Smith’s final story. The seventh series gives us “Impossible Girl.” Meh. The only good thing that came out of that was the Zelig-like shoehorning of Jenna-Louise Coleman into scenes of prior Doctors. Now we’re being slapped in the face with this stoopid Nethersphere bullshit, which almost guarantees that I will end up despising this series’ two-part finale.

When the arc starts to interfere with the process of telling the individual episode stories, it’s time to shitcan the arc.

So, what is my personal order of preference for these six episodes? Rating them based upon which ones entertained me the most:

The first half of Doctor Who series 6 (or series 32, depending on how you count it) aired over the past few weeks. The supposed game-changing mid-series cliffhanger finale aired June 4th in the UK and June 11th in the US of A.

I love Doctor Who. I love Matt Smith as the Doctor. I love Steven Moffat. But … I’m not so sure all three of these ingredients work together. I love garlic, I love caramel, and I love beer, but the thought of a garlic caramel beer doesn’t exactly excite me. I’ve decided that, as far as Doctor Who is concerned, I like Steven Moffat a whole lot better as an occasional writer than as a showrunner. The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances, The Girl In The Fireplace, and Blink were fantastic examples of what Doctor Who can do in terms of storytelling. But lately? Eh … the best episodes of the Steven Moffat era have not been written by Moffat.

Here we go ….

The Impossible Astronaut: The Incomprehensible Script.

Day Of The Moon: Day I Stopped Caring. Is it my imagination or was all that Utah location filming totally wasted?

The Curse Of The Black Spot: Is there any connection between The Curse Of The Black [blank] and pirates? Honestly, I liked Robert Urich’s The Ice Pirates a whole hell of a lot better than I liked this episode, and I absolutely despised The Ice Pirates when I first saw it. So the threat is essentially the manifestation of a technologically advanced emergency medical system that tries to treat humans but does not know how to cure them? I liked this episode a lot better when it was called The Empty Child.

The Doctor’s Wife: Holy hell in a handbasket … thank you very much, Neil Gaiman … this is the highlight of this series thus far and quite possibly one of the BEST things this show has *EVER* done …

The Rebel Flesh/The Almost People: A very nice throwback to the old show’s “base under siege” formula. Matthew Graham more than apologises for his insipid Fear Her. Now if only The Almost People was the end of this run, cuz that cliffhanger was far far more of a game-changer than the overhyped episode that followed.

A Good Man Goes To War: A good friend of mine described this as A Good Script Is Hard To Find, or A Good Man Wouldn’t Do This To His Friends. My response to that was A Good Man Takes A Hot Steaming Crap All Over Something I’ve Loved For Seventy-Eight Percent Of My Life.

Sigh … for the first time since the Sylvester McCoy era, I’m seriously wondering whether or not I’m going to bother watching the rest of the series when it airs in the fall.

Moffat is failing as a showrunner. His last good script was Matt Smith’s first, The Eleventh Hour. But The Eleventh Hour does not hold a candle to the other highlights of his era, Amy’s Choice, Vincent And The Doctor, The Lodger, and The Doctor’s Wife, none of which were written by Moffat.

Sigh … I love Doctor Who enough that I am compelled to keep watching it … but Steven Moffat needs to know that there are still a few Sylvester McCoy episodes that I have never seen.

Steven Moffat works the same magic for Robert Louis Stevenson that he worked for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle with Sherlock. Absolutely magnificent, with tour de force performances by James Nesbitt. Its only flaw: trying to set things up for a second series that was never commissioned. There are times when a series (or season, as we say in the US) should stand alone, and this is one of them. James Nesbitt continues to impress the pants off me.

Wow! The BBC one-ups Warner Brothers to produce the best ever modern adaptation of Sherlock Holmes! Benedict Cumberbatch is fantastic as Holmes, and Martin Freeman is equally exquisite as Watson. I really want to complain that they’re limiting themselves to only three 90 minute eps per series, but heck … if they need to keep the number of eps low in order to keep the quality this high, then I have no choice but to withdraw said complaint.